More than a third of China's provinces saw their populations shrink last year. The data, outlined in the China Statistical Yearbook 2022, renews discussion about a possible population decline in the world’s most populous nation this year, with concerns of severe economic implications. Among China’s 31 provincial-level jurisdictions, 13 reported more deaths than births last year. Those 13 comprised the wealthy regions of Shanghai, Jiangsu and Tianjin; the central provinces of Sichuan, Chongqing, Hunan and Hubei; Hebei, Shanxi and the Inner Mongolia autonomous region in the north and northwest; and the northeastern rust-belt provinces of Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang. For at least six of the jurisdictions, the population declines were the first in modern history. This helped drive China’s national birth rate down to 7.52 per 1,000 people in 2021 – the lowest rate since record-keeping began in 1949. In Heilongjiang province, there were 3.59 births per 1,000 people last year – the fewest in any jurisdiction – with 8.7 deaths per 1,000 people, one of the highest mortality rates.
Official data show that China’s population grew by just 480,000 to 1.4126 billion last year – the smallest population increase since 1962, and a sharp decline from the 2.04 million increase in 2020. Chinese mothers gave birth to 10.62 million babies in 2021 – an 11.5% decline from 2020. Economist Cai Fang, Director of the Institute of Population and Labor Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), expects China’s population to peak this year, then begin falling next year. He said the turning point will have an adverse effect on both the supply and demand sides of China’s economy. Cai said that, in an era of negative population growth, the key will be to stabilize and support growth while expanding demand to prop up economic growth. “One of our major challenges in the future lies on the consumption side. Common prosperity and domestic circulation mean turning the huge population into a large middle-income group, and a huge market,” he said at the Sohu Finance annual conference. Local-level governments across the country have responded by rolling out measures to boost births, including offering subsidies.
The marriage rate is also dropping in China, which has the world’s oldest legal ages to wed. In Sichuan, the number of marriage registrations dropped by nearly 30% in 2021, relative to 2016, the South China Morning Post reports.
